The purpose of this blog is to explore cross-cultural Saudi/non-Saudi relationships and their broader Arab-Muslim/Western contexts, as well as the background for improving understanding across these cultures.

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Friday, June 24, 2011

Some Husbands Just Can't Handle the Truth--Of Their Wife's Success

Rumana Monzur is now unable to see her daughter Anoushe, photographed with her here on a visit to the hospital. (S.K. Enamul Haq for The Globe and Mail)

I found this story very disturbing from the time I first learned of it, as a brief news item, 2 days ago. Since then, the increased attention to, and detail given about, the blinding of a Master's candidate in Political Science has become more challenging to learn about, let alone live.

Ms Rumana Monzur, a 33 year old Bangladeshi, is on a prestigious Fullbright scholarship to do graduate studies at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada), eventually including a PhD. She is also on faculty at the University of Dhaka where she will take up a professorial position once her graduate studies are completed.

Ms Monzur had returned to her native Bangladesh to visit her 5-year-old daughter and her husband during a summer break after the first year of her Master's studies, when she was attacked and blinded by her husband, Hassan Syeed, who gouged her eyes out, bit off part of her nose, and attacked her on the neck. While he claims he didn't want her to return to her studies as he accused her of infidelity, she insists that he was jealous she was getting further education. Others who know her, including the small Bangladeshi community at UBC, insist she wasn't unfaithful, and that it would have been impossible to carry on an extramarital affair without it becoming known.

While it is common enough for a husband to feel jealous of a wife's career success, especially when it eclipses his own, it is uncommon to express that jealousy in such a way. More often there are attempts, some more passive aggressive than others, to sabotage the wife's success, make it secondary to their own or leave the marriage. Most often, the husband celebrates the wife's success as a tribute to her, one that reflects well on him too. That holds true cross-culturally in my experience of graduate students and dual career professional couples.

Gouging someone's eyes out is a particularly brutal form of expression, and doing it such that your 5-year-old daughter is forced to watch is unusually aberrant. I have spoken to a number of South Asians and Bangladeshis about this case. They support the explanations those who know Ms Monazur give--that this is about professional jealousy, and the accusation of adultery is a cultural excuse. They also celebrate that the husband was arrested, and faces 10 years in jail. This, they say, is part of progress in Bangladesh, towards ending domestic violence in general, including any harassment of the wife by the husband.

The interview with Ms Monzur below is the first I have seen. I certainly hope that specialists in the USA are able to restore her sight, and applaud the support that has been given by the UBC community, including the administration. I do hope that if her sight is not restored, she learns to live well unsighted, including availing herself of the excellent accessibility services available at most Canadian and American universities.

As for her daughter, Anoushe, hopefully the excellent support being given by Ms Monzur's family will help ease her trauma.

Rumana Monzur's daughter Anoushe has been to the hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh twice to visit her mother, who was savagely attacked two weeks ago. (S.K. Enamul Haq for The Globe and Mail)

She can no longer read, cannot write, so Rumana Monzur has long and empty hours to lie in her hospital bed in Bangladesh and enumerate what she has lost.

“In Canada, I learned how to dream,” said Ms. Monzur, the University of British Columbia graduate student blinded in a savage attack she alleges her husband committed in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka two weeks ago. Now, “I don’t know how anything will be possible. I’m helpless.”

In a lengthy, often tearful interview, Ms. Monzur, 33, described the attack; her ongoing fears for her safety, and that of her daughter and parents; and her despair at what she feels is the irrevocable loss of her dreams for all of them.

Ms. Monzur enrolled last autumn as a visiting student in the master’s program in international relations at UBC. After nine months in Vancouver, she flew home in mid-May to see her family.

From the moment of her arrival, she said, relations with her husband, Hassan Sayeed, were rocky. He had often been physically and verbally abusive in the early years of their marriage, she said, but after their daughter Anoushe was born five years ago, the violence stopped. “I thought everything was normal again, that it would be okay.”

Ms. Monzur explained that Mr. Sayeed had told her before they married that he had a degree in electrical engineering – but somehow he never found a job. Frustrated by his lack of ambition, Ms. Monzur got a job of her own, teaching international relations at Dhaka University. In secret, though, she applied for graduate work in Canada – and when she was accepted, with a scholarship, she told her husband. “I didn’t ask his permission. He didn’t say no, but he didn’t say yes … he knew I would come back because my daughter was in Bangladesh.”

Anoushe stayed behind, in the care of Ms. Monzur’s parents.

She talked to her family almost every day from Vancouver, and nothing seemed amiss with her husband, she said. But a few days after she returned to Dhaka, she said, he physically attacked her once again. Afterward, Ms. Monzur said, she told him she would not live with him any longer: her time in Canada had hardened her resolve about the life she wanted. Mr. Sayeed left her parents’ house.

Two weeks later, on a quiet afternoon when her parents were out, she was in a bedroom working at her laptop while Anoushe was painting on the bed next to her. Her husband burst in, locked the door, and grabbed her from behind with the words, “You don’t want to live with me, so I will kill you,” she recalled, sobbing.

“First he attacked my neck and then he put his fingers in my eyes. He bit my nose. I tried to protect myself. He bit my hands – I have several injuries in hands and face. Then when I couldn’t see and my nose was bleeding, I was slipping in my own blood. I was almost unconscious.”

Anoushe, still next to her on the bed, was shrieking. “She was screaming, ‘Don’t do this to my mom, don’t do this.’ ”

She said the attack ended only when domestic staff used a second set of keys to open the door and then Mr. Sayeed ran out, with these parting words: “I will kill you wherever you are and when ever I find you. I will shoot you or I will throw acid at you. I won’t let you leave.”

Ms. Monzur, by then, was scrabbling on the floor – she could not see the people who came in, but felt them trying to lift her. “I screamed, ‘Save me, save her – don’t let him take my daughter.’ “ She remembers little after that until she was in hospital, with doctors saying the only hope to save her eyes was expert help in India.

The family arranged to fly to her to Chennai, but ophthalmologists there could not help either. Now, Ms. Monzur is awaiting plastic surgery to rebuild her nose, and hoping desperately for word from medical institutions in the United States and in British Columbia about a last-ditch medical procedure that might restore her eyesight.

Without it, she said, choked with tears, she does not know how she can ever again care for her daughter or resume her work.

Anoushe has been to visit her mother twice in hospital. “I’m trying to be normal in front of her, I’m laughing, I’m telling her stories, I’m singing rhymes,” Ms. Monzur said. “But whenever she tries to show me something and realizes that I can’t see, then she cries, and that’s very been painful to me. Every day she asks me, ‘Are your eyes okay yet?’ She doesn’t know.”

Ms. Monzur said she has been told by family that her daughter goes through their house now pointing at possessions left behind by her father and says, “Daddy was naughty.” Anoushe knows from media reports that he is in jail.

Ms. Monzur’s father, Monzur Hussain, reported the attack to police shortly after it happened; he and several of her cousins returned repeatedly to the station to try to push police to arrest Mr. Sayeed, she said, but only after the Dhaka University teacher’s union threatened labour action in solidarity with her did police pick him up.

He remains in jail, but Ms. Monzur said that does not make her feel safer. The Bangladeshi legal system is weak: it is not unusual for well-to-do defendants to bribe themselves out of custody. “He’s in jail now – but he has friends and he can do anything, because he has money.” Mr. Sayeed comes from a well-off family, she said.

“I feel totally threatened and insecure. I am not sure I can protect my daughter. If he can do this to me, he can do this to my parents and my daughter, too. I am not in a position to protect them – I’m the one they have to take care of now. I can’t feel secure any more because I can’t see.”

The greatest animation came into Ms. Monzur’s voice when she described her academic work. Momentarily distracted from her pain, she talked at length about her work in the emerging field of human security and climate change. She was exploring the negotiating power of developing countries in climate change talks for her master’s thesis, which she had planned to begin writing when she returned to UBC in the autumn. She hoped to continue those studies in a doctorate at the university. Bangladesh, most of which is at sea level, is one of the nations most severely affected by climate change and sea-level rise.

Ms. Monzur said she gave a news conference a few days ago to respond to the stories she says her husband and his relatives were spreading about her in Dhaka. The Bangladeshi media have focused on his allegations of infidelity, which she denies, as a sort of explanation for his assault. “I don’t care what he is saying – that doesn’t give him the right to do this to me,” she said. Rather, she had something else she wanted to make clear.

“Everyone is asking why I tolerated him for so long – why an educated person is tolerating him,” she said. “Because I really loved him. Every time [he was abusive], he convinced me, asked for forgiveness, that’s why I tolerated him. I had a daughter and my daughter needed a father. I didn’t want her to be deprived of her father’s love because of me.”

Ms. Monzur broke down again as she described her gratitude for the support she has received from fellow students and faculty at UBC. She spoke with longing about the idea of somehow returning to her work. “I want to finish my program – I want to do that so badly. I want to do my PhD – but I don’t know how it’s possible …

“Please pray for me so that I get my vision back. I don’t want to live like this. I want to finish my studies and be the person I wanted to be and take care of my daughter – take care of her future.”

**********

Rumana Monzur's daughter Anoushe was in the room when her mother was attacked two weeks ago in Dhaka, Bangladesh. (S.K. Enamul Haq for The Globe and Mail)

"In Canada I learned how to dream," Romana Monzur told The Globe and Mail in an interview. She says she hopes to regain her sight to finish her studies and take care of her daughter. (S.K. Enamul Haq for The Globe and Mail)

Update--February 12, 2012

Rumana Manzur, the University of B.C. student who was attacked and blinded by her husband, talks about her life since her return to Canada, Vancouver, October 11 2011.
Photograph by: Gerry Kahrmann, PNG

Since the original post, Romana has learned that her sight could not be restored, and has returned to life as a mother and student, now blind. Her daughter is learning to adjust to her mother`s challenges too. Her husband Hassan was found dead in a hospital bathroom, apparently of a heart attack. He had been transferred to hospital from jail to attend to his health concerns.

9 comments:

I do not feel shame to say that I think that the higher education people get the easier they take premarital and extramarital sex affair and relations, and in general all sort of sex has become a style and fashion nowadays, and who do that should be careful of those who take it seriously and get unpredictable.

I think even if Rummanah did what he accuses her of, she does not deserve what he did to her,to the hell with her studies but living without being able to see such a beautiful child,I can not imagine that pain, we can not punish people based on suspicions,and when our life partner says he does not think he want to be our life partner any more we should take his word for it,and simply dismiss the partnership, we can not make someone love us in spite of him.

Many years back I used to be of the mind of Rummanah 's husband,but one day at breakfast a mother side uncle of mine, his wife(both are famous for their love to each other) and I was talking about a neighborer whose wife eloped with her husband 's business partner leaving behind 3 beautiful children, jokingly my aunt told my uncle what he would do if she did the same,he said you are crazy if you think I will spoil my hands with your blood or spend a day in jail over you, who created you created millions like you,I will just wish you good luck, until now I don't know whether to consider my uncle a coward or stupid or wise for saying that,but any how I think I follow his path.

I pray to Allah she will be able to see again and guide her to the right path.

It's a very sad story, Chiara. There are millions of stories out there like this one and that is the sad part. The fact that the family, friends and a teacher organization put pressure on the police to arrest the husband is disgusting. Women's rights have a long way to go. Majed, you have a lot to learn about what education does for women and one thing it does NOT do is loosen their morals. It educates them that they do not have to put up with ignorant or abusive men who think women do not need to be educated and are are less than human.

@Majed that you think an higher educated people (or you wanted to say women) has more chance to have a liason.....education FREE people from the bonds of ignorance, let women THINK with their own head, loose morality ISN'T tied to education

When I said educated people I meant people in general,and when I said take sex easy,it does not necessarily mean them being lewd and licentious , it simply means taking easy like being too lenient and tolerant to all kind of sex even if they most often did not take advantage of that leniency themselves.

Wendy, Actually what protects peoples ' right in civilized societies are laws and legislation, not education holstered to be used as weapon to protect and safeguard their rights, in that sense you will be just using education as a weapon like any other weapon actually education is more like a light than weapon, though Rummanah 's heavy artillery did not help her much in absence proper laws and its correct hands.

We have missed the Real point of the post, men feeling jealous of their wives 's success,most often it is a man thing to feel jealous of woman getting above his level, which usually does not take violent turn, but it is not always like that I know men who worked very hard to get their wives getting graduated and post graduated, and I don't think a man would feel jealous or frustrated if his wife no matter how high she gets did not look down at her husband and people around them did insinuate to husband being inferior to his wife, it has to more with society than their mutual feeling,sometime it the society that spreads bad blood among couples.

I feel sad for you, Majed. YOU do not get it. Men like you fear educated women because they learn to have control over their own lives and bodies and learn that they are should not be under some man's rule. If men have such fragile egos that they can't tolerate an educated woman then I feel very sorry for them. Education has nothing to do with sex except to teach a woman than her sex and sexuality is hers alone and not her husband's and that she has the right to say NO even to him. She will learn to NOT let ANY MAN take advantage of her in any way.Outside of YOUR world men in great numbers and living and loving wives who have better jobs and higher education than themselves. These men are confident in themselves and NOT AFRAID of their wives. Too bad you and men like you have such low self esteem that you can't see the value of an educated wife.

Thank you all for your comments, and my apologies for getting back to these so late.

I have updated the post, with more recent information.

It is hard to know the full "truth" about such complex relationships within a marriage, or how one would react to fears/beliefs about being betrayed by a spouse. Most do not react with such extreme responses, especially among the more educated and urban populations (though they are not exempt).

I have no doubt that Hassan most likely loved his wife, and had made efforts for the marriage. Unfortunately he took a wrong action which has had a negative impact on all, including his own reputation, and life.

From what I read, he died of a heart attack, and there were no visible injuries. It is possible that Romana, or her family arranged to have him killed while in prison. However, I haven't seen proof of that. If someone has further information please link it.

Whatever combination of lust, envy, pride, honour, vanity, etc have gone into this family story, it is a tragedy. While one may judge the adults, the 5 year old daughter will hopefully have a good life with a rehabilitated and loving mother.

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About Me

I am a Canadian academic of Italian origin with qualifications in medicine, psychiatry, literature, and philosophy, and interested in the cross-cultural aspects of all of these. I am married Islamically and legally to a Moroccan. I remain a Daughter of the Book.